Presentation to the session 'Between the Punitive and the Supportive II: Urban Social Policy's 'Messy Middle Ground’, Association of American Geographers Meeting Los Angeles, 12 April 2013.

1. Rebalancing for what?
Rebalancing for whom?
The uneven geographies of urban
policy in post-crash Britain
Simon Parker
Centre for Urban Research
University of York, UK
Between the Punitive and the Supportive II:
Urban Social Policy's 'Messy Middle Ground’
Association of American Geographers Meeting
Los Angeles, 12 April 2013
simon.parker@york.ac.uk

2. Rebalancing: the Coalition view
We both want to build a new economy from the
rubble of the old. We will support sustainable
growth and enterprise, balanced across all
regions and all industries.
David Cameron and Nick Clegg, in the Coalition
agreement, May 2010

3. Rebalancing: the Coalition view
“What we need to do in this country is a massive
rebalancing of our economy. We have been too
reliant on government spending, on housing and
finance... We have got to be more reliant on
manufacturing and investment…Local Enterprise
Partnerships would play an absolutely key role in
bringing that rebalancing.”
“What is happening in Britain is a rebalancing of our
economy. We need more private sector growth, we
need a smaller public sector, we need to make
more, sell more overseas and manufacture more.
It's a slow and difficult healing process, but it is
taking place.”
– David Cameron, 7 Mar 2011 and 9 Oct 2012

4. Rebalancing: the Coalition view
“What we need to do in this country is a massive
rebalancing of our economy. We have been too
reliant on government spending, on housing and
finance... We have got to be more reliant on
manufacturing and investment…Local Enterprise
Partnerships would play an absolutely key role in
bringing that rebalancing.”
“What is happening in Britain is a rebalancing of our
economy. We need more private sector growth, we
need a smaller public sector, we need to make
more, sell more overseas and manufacture more.
It's a slow and difficult healing process, but it is
taking place.”
– David Cameron, 7 Mar 2011 and 9 Oct 2012

5. We need growth that lasts – rebalancing our
economy, making the most of all our businesses
and our industries, and turning a page on the
overreliance on wheeling and dealing in the City
of London.
I hope we can lift our sights beyond the
immediate challenges, beyond the fiscal
crisis, to the bigger question: how do we rebuild
our economy, our country, to make our cities the
powerhouses we all need you to be?
Nick Clegg, Sheffield, 14 January 2011

6. The policy measures
• A £1bn regional growth fund specifically targeted
at areas described as “overly reliant on the public
sector”.
• Plans to encourage increased bank lending.
• Replacing regional development agencies with
local enterprise partnerships aimed at growth
"from the bottom up" to create jobs.
• National insurance tax breaks for companies that
start up in areas “overly reliant on the public
sector”.
• Localism Act powers to give town halls more
freedom over the way they spend money.

7. Is there a North/South divide?
The Coalition states that the North/South divide is an
oversimplification. It is true that there are inequalities within
as well as between regions. Not all affluent places are in the
South, nor all poor places in the North. But the evidence in
this report shows that there remains a deep, long-
term, continuing divergence between the North (the three
Northern English regions – the North East, the North
West, and Yorkshire & Humber) and the Greater South East
(the East of England, London, and the South East).
…while previous regional polices for the North had mixed
results in terms of narrowing the regional divide, the evidence
taken from the Inquiry suggests that government doing less
will likely make the position worse.
- Michael Ward, Smith Institute 2011

8. Uneven geographies of resilience
• Only 2 of the top 50 most resilient local
authorities are north of the Severn-Humber
divide (Harrogate and Craven)
• Only 7 of the bottom 50 resilient authorities
are south of the Severn-Humber divide.
• The near monopoly of the most highly
educated workforce by London is as true for
the most deprived boroughs as the least
deprived.

9. • London has 14 of the top 30 ranked local
authorities for NVQ4+ (degree equivalent
qualifications) including all of the top seven
authorities in the country.
• Hackney, Lambeth, Southwark, Haringey &
Islington contain some of the highest
concentrations of graduates in the country as
well as some of the most deprived wards. This
is not replicated in any other large English
metropolitan region.

10. Urban diabetes?
“Urban diabetes is where the
blood pumps around the heart
but fails to reach all parts of the
body. The challenge we face is to
ensure that the wealth that we
do have is shared in such a way
that it flows around the whole
body to every extremity. If in
social terms it fails to do so then
we will be faced with the danger
of parts of the body atrophying
and dying”
- Right Revd James Jones, Bishop of
Liverpool

11. A persistent story of managed decline?

12. Liverpool = top-ranked English
city, deprivation (2010)

13. Unemployment twice national average

14. Is the public sector bleeding to death?
0
500
1,000
1,500
2,000
2,500
3,000
1999
2000
2001
2002
2003
2004
2005
2006
2007
2008
2009
2010
2011
2012
Central govt
Local govt
Public employment by sector (‘000s) 1999-2012
ONS 2012

15. Londoners per capita have 3x the GVA of those in the north-east…one fifth of total UK
GVA
ONS,2012

16. Source: D. Dorling

17. A picture of increasing wealth and
regional inequality
• The South East has biggest share of the wealthiest households
• In 2008/10 the Wealth and Assets Survey (WAS) found combined
net wealth of all private households within Great Britain =£10.3
trillion.
• The wealth held by the richest 10% of households combined was
£4.5 trillion and represented a 43.8% share of aggregate total
wealth.
• In contrast, the combined wealth of the bottom half of households
in the distribution was £1.0 trillion; a value which accounted for
9.9% of aggregate total wealth.
• The wealth held by the top 10% of households = 4 times greater
than the wealth of the bottom half of all households combined
and, over 850 times greater than that of the least wealthy 10% of
households.
• Source: ONS, Dec 2012.

18. The Components of Wealth
• Private pensions account for over half of the total wealth held by
those households in the top decile (56.6%). The median value of
private pension wealth for these households was £742,000.
• Private pension wealth contributed only 30.4% to the wealth held
by the least wealthy half of households.
• More than two out of five households (43.3%) in the least wealthy
half of the distribution had no private pension wealth at all and the
median value of private pension wealth held by this group was
£4,000.
• The contribution of property wealth (net) to the combined total
wealth of the top 10% of households was 25.9% with a median
value of £340,000. Property wealth made the largest contribution
to total wealth for the least wealthy half of households (36.6%)
even though only 41.4% of households in this group had any value
of property wealth.

19. Percentage of Households with Total Wealth Greater than £967,000 by Region, Great Britain,
2008/10

20. Breadline Britain
• 14.0 million people (22.7%) UK population at risk
of poverty or social exclusion (EU average of
24.1%) in 2011.
• 16.2% of UK were at risk of poverty in
2011, down from 18.7% in 2008 (mostly due to
falls in median income leading to a reduction in
the poverty threshold).
• 5.1% of people in the UK experiencing severe
material deprivation, (EU average of 8.8%) in
2011. Broadly unchanged since 2005 when
comparable figures were first produced.

21. “…there are now areas in
some of our cities where
over half of all
households are breadline
poor”
- Dorling, Rigby et al 2007
Non-metro towns less prone to acute poverty

22. Source:DWP

23. The Goldilocks Syndrome
York only city
outside the
south to have
least lowest
skilled work
force
Cities with
lowest skills
are
bigger, northe
rn and
diverse…

24. Cities with lowest and highest
levels of inequality…

25. • “Smaller cities feature significantly in both the
top 10 and the bottom 10 lists. Seven of the
top 10 cities with the highest ratios of private
to public sector employment are small. And five of the
smallest cities (Gloucester, Worthing, Hastings, Cambridge
and Dundee) are also amongst the cities with the greatest
dependence on the public sector”.
• Leeds = only major city to appear in the
top 10, with three jobs in the private sector to every job in
the public sector.
• Liverpool = the only major city in the bottom 10, with only
1.9 private sector jobs to every job in the public sector.

26. • Smaller cities appear to be more resilient than
larger cities
• Larger northern cities are the least resilient
but some in the north are doing OK
• The north/south divide needs qualifying in the
light of significant variations to the resilience
trend, especially among smaller cities.
Conclusion